Thursday, April 30, 2015

In the spirit of re-embracing that cyclical, perennial
essence of the natural world of which food—real food—is a part, it’s probably
worthwhile to take up again the basics of home smoking.Brown trout are on the roster here, but the
same basic principles apply to pretty much any kind of smoking.To take away any stigma of the arcane or
difficult about the process:hot smoking,
which is what constitutes the vast majority of home smoking, is simply indirect
grilling at a fairly low temperature while adding smoke.

Trout, having been brined.

First you obtain a piece of flesh, then you cure it with a
brine or a rub, next you build a fire, finally you cook that brined meat in
low, smoky, indirect heat until it is well saturated with smoke, and cooked
through.It doesn’t really matter if
it’s fish, pork belly, pork shoulder, chicken, venison, beef brisket.If it’s something that spends a relatively
short time in the smoke, like fish or bacon, we call it smoking; if it takes
many hours to do the job, we tend to call it barbeque.Same basic process.

So as not to overlook the obvious:cooking with indirect heat simply means the
meat is not sitting directly over the coals, as it would be when you grill a
steak or a burger.The coals are on one
side of the grill, the meat on the other.Simple as that.

Fish at the back, coals in the front.

The only difficult part of the task, in this age of constant
distraction, is remembering to get your meat brined a day or two ahead,
depending on size and what exactly you’re going for.With these brown trout in the 12-inch range,
an overnight wet brine is plenty.My basic
fish brine consists of 2 tablespoons each of salt and brown sugar per cup of
water; that translates to ½ cup each salt and brown sugar/1 quart water.I start with hot tap water, add the salt and
sugar, stir to dissolve, let it sit until cool (or if impatient add a few ice
cubes).

An instant-read thermometer stuck through the top vent gets you close enough.

The next morning, the fish sit out on a rack to dry a bit
before being smoked.In a smoker—just a
regular home bbq grill, Meco my preference—maintained at around 200-250
degrees, the fish will be done in a couple of hours.When the skin has that gorgeous reddish-gold smoky hue
and the flesh feels firm to the touch, they’re ready.

For most people, the natural chunk charcoal (such as Cowboy
brand) that’s widely available now will be the best choice for a heat
source.Briquets can be used in a pinch,
I guess, but for god’s sake don’t start the fire with lighter fluid.It kind of amazes me that they still sell
that stuff.A chimney starter is the way
to go.

These days I build a fire with local oak and use those coals
as my heat source, usually adding apple wood for the smoke--the oak coals bring their own distinctive smokiness, too.The apple wood is also locally harvested, and
I just use whatever pieces are easy to obtain.A lot of smoking guides tell you to soak your wood chips, if that’s what
you’re using, and I suppose if the chips are very small this makes sense, but
in general I don’t think it’s necessary; you’re trying to make smoke, not
steam, and soaked chips are just going to steam until they finally dry out and
burn.I’m all for cutting out
superfluous steps embedded in common practice by constant, unthinking
repetition.

Smoked browns with celeri buttermilk rampoulade.

In general, I smoke food for the flavor—and other delectable
qualities—it imparts, rather than for preservation.With stream trout, though, extending the
delicious life of the fish is part of the reason for smoking.A fresh fish is good for four or five days
(and sometimes actually improves with two or three days aging), while smoked
fish will keep for two weeks or more.I
don’t feel that smoked fish freezes very well—when it’s thawed it can be
watery, with a grainy texture.Better, I
think, to freeze fresh fish and then smoke it afterward, if you so desire.

Smoked trout can be a centerpiece of a plate, rounded out
with a couple of salads.And it’s a
great ingredient for chowder, and appetizer spread, fish cakes, smoky trout
brandade…. Many possibilities.If you’re
not a fan of the angling arts, or trout are out of season, you can always buy
farmed rainbow trout, a sustainable product, and a tasty one, at that.Also, this same method can be used with other
kinds of fish—I’ve done it with Lake Superior herring, whitefish, and lake
trout.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

I inaugurated the 2015 fishing season on Sunday with a trip
to the Whitewater region of southeastern Minnesota.It has become my tradition over the years to
make a trip or three to Minnesota
waters in the second half of April.The
regular (i.e., catch and kill, rather than catch and release) season in Minnesota opens a couple of weeks earlier than in Wisconsin, which opens
for hook ‘em & cook ‘em the first Saturday of May, Kentucky Derby day.Both states have lengthy catch and release
seasons during the winter and early spring months, and some years ago I did
fish Wisconsin streams in April.You can have some impressive days of catching
fish if you come upon an early mayfly, stonefly, or caddis fly emergence.Also, it just seems that the fish are less wary
at that time of year, maybe because there hasn’t been too much to eat over the
winter.

But I have eschewed the early season fishing in recent years
because I don’t agree with the catch and release “ethic.”As much as I appreciate all the aesthetic aspects
of flyfishing for trout, I’m a meat fisherman at heart, and I don’t like the
“moral” distinctions that some catch and release advocates apply to the
legitimate choices available to those who practice this pastime.So I generally back up my position by not
stringing up my rod unless there’s a legal opportunity to put a trout or two in
my creel.Which is not to say I won’t
waver in my convictions on some bluebird day during the early season, maybe
even next April; or indeed that I won’t find a principled justification for
poaching the odd trout.You just never
know.It pays to keep your options open.

I hadn’t been planning to round up the gear and head for the
stream on Sunday, but when I looked at the week ahead it suddenly seemed like
one of the few days I would be able to get away.We have this new little creature in the
house, a nine-week-old griffon puppy named Gracie, and she’s pretty high
maintenance.Actually she’s a
sweetheart, and worth all the trouble (so far), but with Mary away at work part
of the week, I knew I would have to be around the house, and then there were
other obligations on other days…. It’s just really unconscionable that life
often shows so little regard for fishing.

Sunday was actually looking like a prime day for fishing—overcast
and spitting a bit, but not too cold or windy, and no downpours in the
forecast.My only reluctance arose from
the fact that the Minnesota
trout season had opened just the day before, and opening weekend can bring out
crowds of fisherfolk who in those conditions do not always display the finest
aspects of their nature.Still I figured
it would be worth a shot in the slightly rainy conditions; with some years of
experience on southeastern Minnesota
streams, and a little patience, I thought I’d be able to find some quiet water
to fish.

There weren’t many vehicles parked along the branch of the Whitewater River, a nice surprise.But when I reached the DNR lot in the
wildlife management area through which the river flows, six vehicles had beaten
me there—not much of a surprise there, since it was already late morning.I hesitated only briefly.There were miles of river upstream from here,
with no easy public access.It was also
likely that some of the vehicles had arrived together for an opening weekend
gathering, and so the fishermen would be clumped.And then, if nothing else, it was a pleasant
enough day for a walk in the woods.I
was pretty sure the ramps would be up, and so I would find something edible to
take home.

I’ve been fly fishing for 25 years now, so recalling how to
put a rod together and tie on a fly is not difficult, even if I haven’t done it
in the last seven months.I walked in
waders, wading boots, vest, and a faded Badgers baseball hat down the rutted
two-track with a steep wooded hill on my right and a stubble cornfield on my
left.Beyond the cornfield, across the
river, limestone bluffs aspired, with birches, pine, and aspen on their
flanks.It’s a spectacular valley, and
there are many good reasons to visit there, but it’s fishing that I know will
always bring me back.

I had planned a good long hike to assure myself some
undisturbed fishing, but as I came over a rise five minutes or less into my
walk, I looked to the left and saw the river through the still leafless trees, and
it looked like nice riffle water, and I saw no one fishing it.My habit had always been to hike well
upstream from here, but then aren’t habits made to be broken, I asked
myself?So I made the premature
diversion thinking, well, if the hoards descend, I’ll revert to Plan A.But it turned out to be a good call, with no
need for second thoughts.I fished
happily for about three hours, and saw exactly three other people, at a
distance.No one walked into my water,
and I did not round a bend to discover a party of raucous metal-chuckers.It was an opening weekend miracle.

It wasn’t looking like a dry fly day: no rising fish, no
apparent insect activity.I tied on a
girdle bug, a simple concoction of black chenille and white rubber legs; and
then to a length of tippet tied to the bend in the girdle bug’s hook I knotted
on a small hare’s ear nymph, which to the layman’s eye looks like a little
brown fur wound around a hook, because that’s pretty much what it is.Flies don’t necessarily have to be fancy to
fool fish.

I waded into the stream in a shallow riffle with a rocky
bottom, and as I sensed the water rushing over the top of my boots my blood
rushed, too, with a sense of exhilaration.Fishing writing can easily go over the top with evocations of mystical
communion between the fisher and the natural world, but is indeed something of
a sense of rebirth when you first step into a river after the long off-season.

Or as Nick Adams might have said: It was good.

Right away then, the fishing proved to be good, too.Below the riffle where I entered the river
the current divided into runs along either bank.Casting first to the left I had a hit on my
third cast, and failed to hook the fish, and then another hit a few casts
later, and again my timing was off.Nothing more on that side, but I was encouraged to know the fish were
active, looking for food.Casting then
to the slightly deeper run on the right side, I lifted my arm after my third
cast and saw the rod take on that splendid bend, and felt the line go taut, and
there it was, fish on for the first time in 2015.

It was a lovely fish, too, a deep, chunky brown trout gold along its
flanks, probably a little more than
a foot long.Meat fisherman though I am,
I observe a small ritual of always releasing the first fish of the year, so
once I had reeled the fish in close I ran my hand down the leader until I could
grab the hare’s ear nymph stuck in the side of the trout’s lower jaw, gave it a
quick twist and watched the fish turn and dive to safety on the bottom.I never touched the fish or brought it out of
the water.

And from there the afternoon proceeded like…a really nice
afternoon of fishing. The only real negative was seeing several styrofoam worm containers discarded along the streambanks, which was irksome for two reasons--mainly because of the littering, also because this section of river is designated artificials only, no live bait allowed. (The no worms rule was instituted to support a catch and release fishery, so I should probably feel a little more umbrage about it, if I were consistent. When a fish goes for live bait it will often completely swallow the hook; this almost never happens with flies or other artificial lures.)

Probably the highlight—which was also, ironically,
the biggest disappointment—was hooking a really good fish in a deep run not far
downstream from where I started.I cast
across the run and let the flies sink and sweep through, and about in
mid-stream my line took a jolt, my rod bent violently, and the reel whined as
line peeled off.I tussled with the fish
for a bit, until it moved upstream, took the line down.As the line went down I also had a sinking
feeling.One moment I was experiencing
the thrill of playing a really nice fish; the next I was still standing there
with the line taut, rod in that dynamic curve, yet everything was
different.The trout, which had taken
the nymph, had found a log along the bottom of the stream and swum under it;
the hook of the girdle bug had gotten stuck in the log, allowing the fish to
break the tippet and swim away.All I
could do was roll up my sleeve, reach down the leader as far as I could without
going snorkeling, give a tug and break the tippet.I was lucky that the tippet broke right where
it was tied to the hook, and I didn’t have to perform major leader
repair.

I caught a few more fish, including one that was just barely
under 12 inches, and that fish went in the creel.Careful measurement is required on this
stream to observe the regulations, for there is a no-kill slot of 12 to 16
inches, meaning all fish in that range must be released.You are allowed to keep five fish under 12
inches, or four under 12 and one over 16.I don’t think I’ve ever caught a 16-inch trout in that stream.

Although brook trout were native to this region, the
introduced “German” brown trout now predominates.I’ve never heard or seen them referred to as
an invasive species, though.

The ramps were indeed in prime condition on this 18th
day of April, and I picked a nice sack full.A spring trickles through the ramps patch, and this year it was wearing a
lovely coat of green—nice, perky watercress.I brought some of that home, too.Also a few sprigs of mint growing along the streamside path, which I
used to make a sort of julep with a bit of birch syrup and 2 Gingers
whiskey.I noticed other wild
edibles:garlic mustard (always referred
to as an invasive species) and stinging nettles.When I have ramps and cress I’m not that
interested in garlic mustard, and I have nettles a’plenty all around the edges
of my yard.

With the opening day’s bounty from stream and woods I made a
simple, seasonal meal.I fileted the
trout, chopped the bones and put them in a saucepan with a chopped shallot,
stuck that in a hot oven to brown up.Then I added some white wine, chicken stock and water, and let it reduce
and infuse, still in the oven.

To anchor
the plate I prepared a recipe I had never made before, “schupfnudeln” from
David Bouley’s East of Paris.It’s a
sort of noodle-gnocci hybrid, a potato dough with egg and butter that you roll
with your hands into short, thick noodles.It was really easy to work with, and very tasty, and I’m thinking I may
make a couple big batches to freeze, since I have a lot of potatoes in the
basement that aren’t going to be good for much longer.

You boil the nudeln, then brown them in a fry pan.For the fat I chopped a little of our
home-smoked bacon.As the noodles were
starting to brown I tossed in a couple generous handfuls of chopped ramps, mainly
the bottom white and red part.I also
chopped a good handful of the ramp greens and added these to some melted
butter.The butter I brushed on the skin
side of the trout before sticking it in a hot convection oven, and cooked it
until it just started to brown.

I added a little more wine and a little butter to the
reduced stock/sauce at the end.Laid
down a bed of the lovely brown, fragrant, bacony noodles, some fresh cress on
top of that, spooned the sauce over that, and crowned it with the trout.

This, to me, is the sort of meal so emblematic of the way we
live, of the way we have chosen to live and eat, that it’s beyond the realm of
food criticism of any traditional sort.But it was wonderful, and we cleaned our plates.

That’s my story of the first fishing outing, and first trout
stream meal of 2015.If you’ve made it
this far, I thank and applaud you.It’s
a perennial story that I always feel is worth telling again.I hope you enjoyed it.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Sugaring season came to an end this week.The birches were running pretty good for a few
days, but with afternoons in the sunny 60s the sap doesn’t keep.The maples slowed and then dried up a good
week ago, and are now breaking bud.I
also tapped our one big black walnut this year, but not soon enough to get much
sap—enough to cook down to maybe a third of a cup, which isn’t bad, considering
I only had about a half gallon of sap.My minimal experience with black walnut tells me that the sap is at
least as concentrated in sugar as maple, and that it probably
starts running at about the same time.Since our black walnut tree is always extremely late to leaf out, I had
assumed the sap would run late, too.Not
so.

I took a very low-key approach to sugaring this year.I tapped about five maples, exactly two
birches, and the one black walnut. I
left my half-assed sap contraption in mothballs, and just reduced the sap on
our woodstove, very gradually, and did the final brief boiling on our gas cooktop.The
result was not any great quantity of anything, but the process did produce some
observations.

Shades of maple: from left, first to fourth boilings of 2015 syrup, and one from 2014 at right.

The maple syrup was the lightest in color that I’ve ever
made.Even the fourth and final batch,
from sap gathered just before the trees dried up, is medium amber at most—the
last syrup is usually very dark, verging on what sometimes is sold as “grade
B”.So there’s less of a caramel taste
to the maple, but it’s delicious just the same.

Slow birch 2015.

The “slow birch” also made a much lighter, more delicate
syrup than hard-boiled versions I’ve done in the past.It's a gorgeous color, reddish mahogany. There’s still an edge of acidity to it, but
it’s rounder, without the aggressive, almost bitter bite of the darker
stuff.I suppose you could liken it to
different roasts of the same coffee bean, from light to Vienna, French, espresso.Actually, I think you could very much liken
it to that.I could see using the
lighter stuff to drizzle over grilled or roasted vegetables, where the darker
version works better combined with other ingredients, in vinaigrettes,
marinades, or glazes.

Hard-boiled 2014 birch.

Finally, the walnut.As I say, I wound up with about half a cup.It’s much more like maple syrup than birch,
which makes sense—maple and walnut trees are more closely related to each other
than they are to birches, aspens, etc.Also, I believe, though I don’t know for sure, that walnut syrup is
composed of sucrose, as is maple syrup, while birch syrup contains mainly
fructose and glucose.I’m just going
from taste, and common sense(?) on that.

Black walnut syrup.

The main thing I was aware of with the walnut syrup was
trying NOT to describe its aroma or flavor as “nutty.”I resisted that characterization mightily,
and in the end, I failed.The finished
product definitely has a slight, but undeniable, aroma of toasted nuts to it,
and a maple-level sweetness.

There you go.That’s
the sugaring report.I think all three
kinds of syrup are worth making if you have access to a few trees.And as with my previous explorations of
micro-batch pickling and preserve making, I hope I’ve shown that you can have
fun with DIY foods without going overboard into tedious mass production.Sometimes a taste is enough.

Birch in the final reduction.

Next time it’s on to the nettles and other wild greens.‘Tis the season.And it’s been mild enough of late that I
think I’ll hit the garden today and plant some radishes, mache, lettuce, and
peas.

Friday, April 3, 2015

I got a chance today to talk maple syrup cookery with Rob Ferrett on the Food Friday segement of Wisconsin Public Radio's Central Time and have compiled here a few of the recipes I mentioned on the show. I've made this dish a lot lately, while testing the recipe out for the cook-off, at the cook-off, and then as the featured dish I prepared at Kate's Occasional Cafe at the Dairyland Cafe in Ridgeland this past week. I'm still not tired of it.

Preheat your oven to 425. Combine all the ingredients except
the scallions in a large bowl and toss to coat the wings with the seasonings.
Place the wings and seasonings in a heavy roasting pan, and bake, stirring every
15 minutes or so, for 45 minutes. Add the scallions and continue baking,
stirring occasionally, until the wings are well browned and the seasonings have
become a glaze that coats the wings. This will probably take another 15 to 25
minutes.

Options: For really dark and glazy wings, turn on the
broiler for the last few minutes of cooking, and turn the wings a couple of
times so they brown evenly, being careful that they don’t burn.

If you have a convection feature on your oven,
you can produce excellent results without resorting to the broiler. Bake at 400
convection and check every 10 minutes, adding the scallions after 30 minutes.
Total cooking time with convection should be 40-45 minutes.

Combine all marinade ingredients and pour over the steak, coating well. Marinate the steak for a couple of hours at room temp. Prior to grilling remove the steak to a separate plate, saving the marinade. Add hte marinade to 1/3 cup chicken stock in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer.

Grill the steak over hot natural wood coals to desired doneness--about 3 minutes per side for rare, 4 for medium rare. Let the steak rest on a platter for at least 5 minutes; add the juices that the resting steak produces to the stock and marinade mixture. Serve with grilled vegetables and salad.

In terms of underappreciated, tasty bargain meats, chicken thighs are
right there with pork shoulder steaks, in my opinion. The thigh is my
preferred part of the bird, though I fully appreciate the wing thing,
too. Chicken wings prepared in a Sichuan dry-fried manner are an
exquisite treat. The thighs, though, are more accommodating in a
knife-and-fork meal context, and when they are boneless, why, they make
positively civilized eating--cooking them over nice smoky hardwood coals
keeps them on the rustic side.

Ramps season is starting as the maple season ends, and I often wind up
putting the two together, frequently on chicken. This is a flavorful,
simple dish to celebrate the return of grilling weather (well, comfortable grilling weather; we cook over the coals year-round).

A paillard is a flattened out piece of meat. I wail away at my thighs
with the side of a heavy cleaver--a meat mallet, or even a small sauté
pan will get the job done.

Purchase boneless skin-on chicken thighs, or bone them yourself. Place
one thigh at a time on a cutting board, and with a meat mallet, the side
of a heavy cleaver, or a small, clean saucepan, pound each thigh
vigorously until the meat is about ½ inch thick—the surface area of the
thighs should nearly double.

Combine the rest of the ingredients in a mixing bowl and add the
chicken, coating it well on all sides. Let the chicken marinate for at
least 60 minutes at room temp, or longer in the fridge. When you’re
ready to cook, prepare a fire of natural wood coals, and grill the
chicken over medium-hot coals, turning often, for 12 to 15 minutes
total. The chicken should be very well browned on both sides.

If you have extra ramps, toss a few in what remains of the marinade, and grill them along with the chicken.

Cut
the thick ribs out of the chard leaves, and slice these diagonally into
1/2-inch pieces. Tear or cut each leaf into four or five pieces. Heat a
10-inch skillet or the like, and add the olive oil, then the onion and
the chard rib pieces. Add a couple of pinches of salt, the stock (or
stock and water, or water). Cover and cook over medium heat for 6 to 8
minutes, until the chard is starting to soften. Then add the chard
leaves, and as soon as they wilt into the liquid add the vinegar and
maple syrup. Cook uncovered for another three to four minutes, until the
chard is tender to taste and the liquid is somewhat reduced. Taste for
salt, sweet, and sour. Serve in a dish

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Trout Caviar: Recipes from a Northern Forager (Minnesota Historical Society Press) is now available. It contains over 150 recipes from woods and stream, garden and market, as well as essays on foraging, cooking, and gardening; smoking basics, fun with fermentation, and much more.

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Trout Caviar is an online journal that celebrates local, seasonal foods and the people who grow, raise, make, sell, cook and savor them.
Our local foods are those that come from Minnesota and Wisconsin, but we're devotees of authentic flavors wherever they arise. I'm Brett Laidlaw and I write the text and take the photos seen here. My co-conspirator in this endeavor is Mary Eckmeier, wife, Pastry Goddess, Plate-Licker, Soup-Smiler. We used to run a home-based farmers market bakery called Real Bread, currently in hiatus.
Bide-A-Wee, that's our tiny off-grid cabin on 20 rustic acres in beautiful northern Dunn County, Wisconsin.